The Great White Hype and the Multitude of Brown By Dakarai Olumide

We mourn the loss of life caused by terrorism. We mourn the robbery of innocence caused by violence. However, as violence begets violence, the question must be asked what came first the Chicken or the Egg? I use this analogy because the history of our modern world is steeped in White Supremacist dogma. A dogma that predicates violence as a cleansing source and as a necessary tool of enforcement. We are a westernized culture that has been irreparably shaped by a belief system that believes simply, white equals good and black automatically equals bad. As a society that has normalized White, read Caucasian, as the default race and everything other to be subordinate we have embraced and purchased that which has enslaved and shamed us. Our world wide celebration of the Great Whiteness forces us to look at all other cultures as “weird” or “other”. Spreading this belief and shaming onto all belief systems that are not in support of the “Great White Hype”. It’s our constant search for and frowning upon the idea of this Brown, Dark Other, because if you are not one of us you are by default against the grain and abnormal. This is not an indictment of Whiteness or White Culture, that is this is not to criminalize one entire group in the way Supremacist have done to explain any of their plans to uplift their race; think Manifest Destiny, The Trail of Tears, The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, Japanese Internment, and The Holocaust. With subsequent movements needed to fight against Supremacy’s hold in order to move the pendulum forward. We, who are seeking justice, not equality, are battling an ideology that nations have been founded upon, we cannot heal and uproot racism and hate when it is apart of the foundation and bedrock we are standing on. Though its removal is need it would be the equivalent of someone pulling the rug out from under your feet. Perhaps King’s dream wasn’t just of the wonderful land where creed and color no longer govern our persons but of a society that celebrates us as a collective of culture and no longer as different races of humanity. Maybe in his vision we finally left the zoo and realized we are all the same animal much like leopard, the tiger and the lion our differences are skin deep. Perhaps he saw the healing of these differences, the settlement of generations of war between these varied cultures, perhaps he saw the resolution of a new peace we’ve never known. For we have never known a non-racial society, it hasn’t existed in our modern history, nor in our lexicon. We haven’t seen the mountain top because getting those who have benefited throughout history from the spoils of racism to admit the bias and to accept and seek change is all but impossible. It’s like we are dealing with Veruca Salt, she knows it’s not fair that she has all the toys, and acknowledges it, but demands more each day. Perhaps we need the Umpah Loompah’s spontaneously arranged songs and choreographed performances to open the eyes of the masses, maybe instead of Martin’s dream we need Willy Wonka’s garbage shoot for our old system. The time has come where we must demand legislative evolution. For it is human nature to seek the status quo, comfort, that which we know aka the same ol’ same. However, we must get beyond our comforted norms, we must consciously put aside our biased views and develop a new way of seeing the world. If we truly want justice we must make justice the cornerstone of our legislative processes not the pursuit of capital and not the varied dogmas of religion. We must do away with our prehistoric views of race and social policy. We have long past our expiration date on beliefs that were created to explain our separation of the species and we have too long waited for a change in the laws that govern our world. Dr. King once asked and answered “How long? Too long”, the wait we can no longer abide and we must learn to seek legislation and legislators who are moving us forward, we cannot afford to go back for too much ground has already been lost. +D/O